I Love L.A.

This one's for you, Whitbeck: Behold, the County of Los Angeles. The white areas are the City of Los Angeles; the colored areas are other incorporated cities; the gray areas are unincorporated.

Look at the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area, bound by the 90, the 10, the 110 and the 42.  This is where I grew up. It's part of the area referred to as South Central L.A., but you can see some of it isn't in the city at all - that's where we lived, in Baldwin Hills near the boundary with Crenshaw.  (More on this when I get back to 60 in 60.)  I lived fairly close to the downtown area ("Central City" on the map), but still not technically within the City of Los Angeles.  Nearly surrounded by it, but not in it.

Now look up, almost straight north, to the intersection of the 101, the 134, and the 170.  This is the East San Fernando Valley.  Most of "The Valley" (there are actually three within the county, and people from San Gabriel or Antelope get kind of annoyed that San Fernando gets the definite article) is incorporated into the City Proper, including Studio City, my neighborhood.  I live farther away from downtown than I used to, but now within the City of Los Angeles.

This is not what people from Los Angeles, nor people from anywhere else in the world with any knowledge at all of L.A., mean when they talk about being in or from "the city."  There's no delineated difference, municipally, between city and suburb; so the distinction becomes arbitrary.  People draw an imaginary circle of some radius, with Downtown Los Angeles as the center; they call the inside the City of Los Angeles, and the outside Suburbs or Not-L.A.  For most Angelenos, that radius is about the distance from Downtown to the 10/405 interchange.  Most Angelenos also tend to ignore the eastern hemisphere of that circle.

In any case, we identify by neighborhoods - which can often sound like we're not from what we consider the City of Los Angeles, even if we are.  Identifying by neighborhood is geographically convenient.

I think for most people not from the County of Los Angeles, and who haven't spent much time - if any - here at all, that radius is even shorter.  They think of Los Angeles as a relatively small city with a ginormous case of suburban sprawl on its outer marches.  It's not.  It's all of a piece, city and suburb; not quite all of a piece, city and county.  People from Sylmar are from the County and City of Los Angeles, but not from whatever people mean when they say "the L.A. Metropolitan Area."

My G Reader buddy who says he's never met anyone from the city proper may very well be wrong.  On one level he is, I live in the city proper; the question is, do I live in the "L.A. Metropolitan Area?" I think so - others don't.